Category: beautiful

Power to the Patas!

Last evening I soaked my weary body in a hot bath. I have become diligent about walking three miles every day at lunchtime, and my aging and out of shape body feels it. Both for better and for worse.

While running through my usual bath stuff, I got out my little cheese grater looking dealie and went after some of the rougher spots on my feet. As I smoothed out the soles, I started looking closer at my feet. My poor feet. They are really taking the brunt of three miles a day, every day.

I’ve always been a little iffy about my feet. They are fairly large, rather wide and my arch is kind of high. My feet are a bit malformed (bunions!) due to genetics, a few years dancing in toe shoes, and a lot of time on my feet over the course of my life.

Mostly the paws serve me pretty well. They don’t hurt and they get me around the lake four times a day so that my heart and mind get healthy too.

So I should love my feet. I sat there in the tub with my right foot near my face, trying to find things to like about them. Aesthetically speaking I mean.

After the bath I started wondering how I could learn to love my feet. How could I give them respect they deserve? They’ve been awfully good to me over the years.

I thought about how in many cultures we adorn that which is valuable, so I got out my beautiful red nail polish and gave myself a pedicure.

Now then. That’s better. Pretty!

Then I decided I should photograph them. Doll them up, pose ’em and give them some love.

It feels weirdly very intimate to share this photo on the web. I’m rather sheepish about it, to be honest. It almost feels more nekkid than putting something rather more naughty out there.

I had second, tenth and eightieth thoughts about it.

But here we go. There’s my toes.





I was fantastically late to work this morning because of this. I’m glad my boss is out on business travel, because that would have been a tough conversation.

“Karen, you’re late. Why are you late?”

“Um.” (that’s me hedging because I really can’t lie. I have a moral blindspot, especially around an authority figure.) “I’m late because I was having a photoshoot. With my feet.”

My boss would then give me that look he gives me over the top of his extraordinarily stylish frames and then walk away. After a year together he knows better than to ask too many questions.

Meanwhile, I keep looking at the photo and after a first cringe, I think “you know, they are not that bad. Not bad a’tall.”

Learning to love my body, one toe at a time.


A Good Guide

After my dad passed a few years ago, I took possession of the family collection of photo albums and scrap books, with the solemn promise I’d keep them safe.

It was an easy promise, because I adore all the family artifacts. As a kid, I used to dive into the pages and smile at photos of my hot young mom (she was stunning!) and my young dad (he was geeky!).

My mom was a great scrapbooker so there’s great stuff to look at, including lots of artifacts from when she first moved to Albuquerque back in the 1950’s.

When my mom handed this all over to me, I realized the collection is far larger than I’d ever known, and I’m loving taking time to go through it all. Every time I dive in, I manage to find something I’ve never seen before while I’m in there.

Some of my favorite finds are the handwritten letters, which is such a lost art. You can learn a lot about relatives you never knew by reading their letters.

I have an assignment from a rather important editor (my amazing mom-in-law) to write about my paternal grandmother, and so I was in the family stacks last night doing some research.

That’s when I found this, a letter from my grandfather to my father.

The handwritten bit up in the corner says, “Read weekly, a good guide – Dad”

Here’s what it says:

12

Things

To

Remember

* *

1. The value of time


2. The success of perseverance.


3. The pleasure of working.


4. The dignity of simplicity.


5. The worth of character.


6. The power of kindness.


7. The influence of example.


8. The obligation of duty.


9. The wisdom of economy.


10. The virtue of patience.


11. The improvement of talent.


12. The joy of originating.


Such simple words that encapsulate such very strong values. This is endearing fatherly advice to a son and it is timeless. This was written in 1949, but is just as applicable 62 years later.

Gives me much to ponder as I wade through another busy work week.







Whoooah, Geek Out! Le Geek, c’est Chic. Geek Out!

On Friday, through a series of rather wonderfully fortunate events, The Good Man and I were invited to attend a San Francisco Giants baseball game as guests in one of the luxury boxes at AT&T Park.

I’ve had a chance to frolic on the luxury level before, and I know how good it can be, so I was more than happy to accept this opportunity.

It was a beautiful September night at the yard and the Giants were playing the Dodgers.

From where we sat, it looked a little like this:





Enjoy this truly rare photo, as it shows the Giants have a runner on first base. They only managed to score one run the entire night. These days Giants baserunners are on the endangered species list. (grr!)

The reason for admittance to the luxury suite was a corporate event, so there was much gabbing and hand shaking and business talking going on. The Good Man and I got there early enough to quickly get through the gauntlet of hand shaking, then we went outside and found nice seats.

A (free) cold beer, some (free) good food, and two fantastic seats later, we were feeling pretty darn happy.

It hardly gets any better than that.

But it did. It got better than that.

A lot better.

In the third inning, one of the sales guys I knew came over and said, “hey guys, I think Willie McCovey is here.”

Um.

What?

We’d been told there was a chance he’d make an appearance, but I certainly didn’t believe it would happen.

It happened.

This is a TERRIBLE photograph, but under the auspices of “pictures or it didn’t happen” meme on the internet, I figured I’d own up to it.

Some things to know about this photo:

1) It was taken with a cell phone camera and the photo is fantastically noisy
2) the lighting in the room was TERRIBLE for even the best of cameras
3) It was Friday at the end of a very long week and I was beat down tired
4) I was EXTRAORDINARILY geeked out to be meeting Mr. McCovey

So add all that up and please excuse the terrible photo. Mr. McCovey looks fine. I look like something the cat dragged in.





Mr. McCovey signed a baseball for me. Right there. As I watched. He took a baseball, signed it, and handed it. To me.

Oh my dear heavens!

Here, see!!!





I was utterly stunned. Profoundly stunned. Mr. McCovey is a very calm, quiet guy. He speaks with a slight Alabama accent and is quite humble. I thanked him for being with us on that night and he said it was his pleasure.

We had a chance for a quick question and answer session and he was very generous with his time.

During the moments while they were setting up the event for Mr. McCovey to sign baseballs, I said to The Good Man, “Hey, look! That guy over there is wearing a World Series ring! I’m going in to take a closer look.”

The Good Man said, “Well I’m going too!”

So I approached the man and said, “Excuse me, is that a World Series ring?”

He said yes.

I said, “May I see it? I’ve only seen photos.”

The guy said “sure” and then he TOOK THE RING OFF and handed it to me.

I said, “whoa, I didn’t think you’d actually take it off.”

He laughed and said, “well, I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

So I looked at the ring. It’s really beautiful. Classic diamonds and a deep carved Golden Gate Bridge. So stunning. And to me, so meaningful.

I turned the ring over in my hand and looked at the side. There I saw the name Alioto engraved.

Oh shit. I’d just accosted Giants Vice President Mario Alioto, member of the most powerful family in San Francisco.

Um. Oops. He was quite nice about it, but I quickly handed it back, commenting “it’s really heavy!” and he laughed and joked about it being gaudy (it’s not).

But then the rest of the night I kept saying to The Good Man, “oh god…what was I thinking….oh lord…..what WAS I THINKING?”

I comforted myself by looking at my signed baseball, still so totally in awe.

For goodness sakes, I’d just met Willie McCovey face to face. I spoke to him! I shook his hand!

Gah!!!

Geek out! Double Geek out!!

Needless to say, I had more than a little bit of trouble getting to sleep that night.



Communicatin’

When I read that today’s Theme Thursday is communication, I had to laugh to myself.

See, communication is a great big part of my job. I wear many hats, but day in and day out I’m inundated with communication devices. In fact, stashed in the corner of my office I have a fully loaded box of very old cell phones. Due to a weird contractual issue, I’m not allowed to ditch them to a recycling company. No one wants these damn things (least of all, me) but I have to hang on to them until the contract runs out.

So when I saw today’s theme, I thought “hey, it would be cool to lay all those crappy old flip phones out in a cool design and photograph them.

A short Google search showed me that a man named Rob Pettit already had this idea. And he executed it so much better than I could have.

From Rob’s webpage:

“Rob Pettit, a 2007 graduate of the SMFA, creates cell phone art to high light (sic) the proliferation and waste of cell phones.”

I’ve got a big box of throwaway gear that backs his viewpoint.

Behold the intricate beauty of Rob’s work (visit his website or click image for full size photo):


These particular devices are what I have a’plenty in my office. Maybe when I’m released from contractual boundaries, I can ship them off to Rob.




Remember StarTac phones? They really work in the outer rings of this piece.




Who would have thought that ugly gray candy bar style phones could be so intriguing? This has an almost industrial, cog in the machinery feel to it.





My Aural New Mexico

Over the past weeks, the good folks over at NPR are doing a series of short essays about the sounds that evoke memories of summer.

Today on Twitter, New Mexico Magazine posed the question “What’s your quintessentially New Mexican sound of summer?”

Well, that just opened the door to the Wayback Machine and shoved me right in. I’ve been lost for a few hours, thinking…remembering.

Turns out I can’t name just one. So let’s go with five.


Evaporative Cooling

This is a cacophony of noises. A creaky drum turning inside the cooling unit, the wet wind whooshing out, and the drip, drip, drip of water running off the roof.

Both loud and comforting all at once. I’m a light sleeper, but the white noise of a swamp cooler set on high in the dead of a hot summer day will drop me fast into sweet dreams.


Cicadas

Not a very original summer thought, but a genuine memory. That droning buzzing sound used to drive me bonkers.

Where the swamp cooler lulled me to sleep, the cicadas kept me up all night.

We had this huge tree in our backyard that would fill to overflowing with the damn bugs.

There is a site I found that calls cicadas “nature’s vuvuzela“. Damn right! Gah!

I used to mentally try to get them to stop. Like Uri Gellar bending spoons, I thought I if I thought hard enough I could control it.

I couldn’t control it. Damn winged creatures had a mind of their own.

Such a distinct sound of summer.


The low rumble of an August monsoon storm off in the distance and approaching fast.

The summer storms move so quick you know it will be on top of you before you know it. It goes from bright sunny skies to black boiling skies in what seems like an instant.

I’d be out in the yard playing or on my rollerskates and I’d hear that sound. Like a low mumble at first. I’d take off for home before it turned in a loud wail.

Here’s a not very well kept secret: I’m a skeerdy cat when it comes to storms.


Styrofoam cooler and lures on a fishing pole.

Do they even make squeaky Styrofoam throwaway coolers anymore? Because that’s an unmistakable sound. We’d pack sodas for us, beers for dad, and bait for the fish along with a couple sandwiches into the blue speckled cooler. Then the fishing poles alongside with the jangling lures hanging off the end.

Then we’d all load into the truck and head down dirt roads to fish Ute Lake.

That squeak jangle engine rumble symphony can only mean summer to me.


Flame thrower on a tumbler of green chile

Ok, this one may be more of a smell than a sound memory, but at the end of summer (like, oh, now) the green chiles are coming in from the fields and at every grocery store there is some guy with a flamethrower and a metal turning basket.

You want ’em roasted? Okay! *click* WHOOOOOOOOSH.

There ya go.

Damn. It’s like a piece of my soul.

My quintessential sounds of summer may not be NPR worthy, but they all make me smile.

In the summertime, my Fair New Mexico is a beautiful place to be…for ALL the senses.




Image from I don’t know where….if it’s yours, let me know and I’ll credit or remove at your request.